Category: Network World

Microsoft’s newfound embrace of open-source software continues with the news today that the company will now offer a Linux on Azure certificate through its Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate program.

Those who pass both Microsoft’s 70-533 exam and the Linux Foundation’s Certified System Administrator exam will receive the Linux on Azure cert from the MCSA program. The cert is available as of today, according to a joint announcement.

Regardless of which of the various winter holidays you happen to celebrate, one thing remains certain: you’re going to be buying someone a present (possibly even yourself). And you’d really like it to be running Linux. Because you’re awesome. And that’s what awesome people would like. What follows are, what I consider to be, the most fun and/or interesting Linux-powered gadgets that would make awesome gifts this year. In order, from cheapest to… significantly less cheap. Let us begin.

According to SophosLabs, Linux/Ransm-C ransomware is one example of the new Linux-based ransomware attacks, which in this case is built into a small command line program and designed to help crooks extort money through Linux servers.

“These Linux ransomware attacks are moving away from targeting end users and gravitating toward targeting Linux servers, web servers specifically, with a piece of software that encrypts data and is similar to what we’ve seen in previous years such as CryptoWall, CryptoLocker, and their variants,” explains Bill Swearingen, director of Cyber Defense, CenturyLink.

As long as attackers can leverage the ease of coding strong encryption and the high availability of anonymous currencies and anonymous hosting, ransomware is here to stay, says Swearingen. With security organizations like SophosLabs seeing and tracking new variants of Linux ransomware, enterprises should make themselves aware of its risks and cures, since as server owners, users, or operators they are prime targets.

When I first started my adventures with Linux – back in the late 1990s with SuSE (the “u” was lowercase back then) version 6.SomethingOrOther – my computer was a large, heavy, loud, metal rectangle.

It was beige. And it was expensive. I probably spent more on that beast of a computer than I probably should have.

Flash forward to today – some 15-odd years later – and my life is filled with reasonably priced, astoundingly portable computers capable of running Linux far better than that old monolith on my desk could ever dream of. Literally. Sub-$10 computers are not only performing better than that old 1990’s relic of mine, they’re also performing better than my laptops from barely more than five years ago.

As I review one Linux distribution or another, I find myself uttering phrases like “This is pretty good! Almost makes me want to switch my system to this,” over and over again. So many distributions of Linux are truly fantastic – but usually with a caveat. Something that stops me from making them my primary system.

Which begs the question… What does the perfect Linux distribution (or Linux-based operating system) look like for me?

If I throw out all of my preconceptions of various distros, and ignore any sense of brand or community loyalty that I have (let’s be honest… we all have at least a little bit of that) and focus purely on what that makes up that perfect system… what would it look like?

And, you know what? It is really solid. I’d go so far as to say it is the most excellent release of Ubuntu since they made the switch to the Unity desktop environment many years back.

But… that’s a bit of a problem. Since Ubuntu is so laser-sight focused on their in-house developed Unity environment, other environments simply don’t work as well. I experienced multiple problems trying to run GNOME on vanilla Ubuntu 15.10 – and had similar issues with KDE Plasma.

As a programmer, I’m aware that I tend to make mistakes — and why not? Even programmers are human. Some errors are detected during code compilation, while others get caught during software testing. However, a category of error exists that usually does not get detected at either of these stages and that may cause the software to behave unexpectedly — or worse, terminate prematurely.

If you haven’t already guessed it, I am talking about memory-related errors. Manually debugging these errors can be not only time-consuming but difficult to find and correct. Also, it’s worth mentioning that these errors are surprisingly common, especially in software written in programming languages like C and C++, which were designed for use with manual memory management.

It’s been a container-filled week thanks to the DockerCon EU show in Barcelona, but on Thursday Red Hat added its own voice to the mix with a new Linux release featuring expanded container support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, which is the software’s first big update since March, is now generally available, with new additions focusing on containers, security, networking and system administration.

Included in RHEL 7.2 are updates for the Docker engine and container-management technologies including Kubernetes, Cockpit and the Atomic command. In addition, RHEL Atomic Host 7.2, the latest version of Red Hat’s container workload-optimized host platform, is available with most RHEL 7.2 subscriptions.

Let’s just get this out of the way: this isn’t the year of Linux on the desktop. That year will probably never arrive. But Linux has gotten just about everywhere else, and the Linux community can take a bow for making that happen. Android, based on the Linux kernel, is so prevalent on mobile devices that it makes the longstanding desktop quest seem irrelevant. But beyond Android there are a number of places where you can find Linux that are truly odd and intriguing, and by “places” we mean both strange devices and weird geographical locations. This slideshow will show you that it’s always the year of Linux pretty much everywhere.

I’ve known Linus Torvalds, Linux’s inventor, for over 20 years. We’re not chums, but we like each other.

Lately, Torvalds has been getting a lot of flack for his management style. Linus doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He has one way of judging people in his business of developing the Linux kernel: How good is your code?

Nothing else matters. As Torvalds said earlier this year at the Linux.conf.au Conference, “I’m not a nice person, and I don’t care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel — that’s what’s important to me.”

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